Re: the woes of non-cvs haskellers

[hugs-bugs removed from cc, this seems focussed on GHC?]

> Towards the end of last year I started experimenting with modified "nightly"
> build scripts to build in one fell swoop ghc (and it's libraries), alex,
> happy, greencard and hdirect.

|Speaking from a GHC standpoint, your efforts were/are greatly
|appreciated.  Probably the reason that building GHC on Windows is "a hit
|and miss affair" is because we don't have the same level of constant
|testing that happens with the Linux port: having a nightly build report
|for the Windows build would help keep us aware of problems in the
|Windows world as they crop up.
|As far as packaging goes, it would definitely be useful if the output of
|the nightly build on Windows was an installable .msi - I think Sigbjorn
|has some tools to automate this process, but not sure if they're ready
|for prime time yet (Sigbjorn?).  If we had this, then the .msi could be
|published on the web along with the other development snapshots.

Speaking from a GHC binaries user's standpoint, this would seem to
provide more frequent synchs of binaries with CVS while at the same
time elevating the level of Windows testing to that of Linux, thus 
promising improvements for the official binary releases even if the 
snapshots themselves might occasionaly catch the repository in a 
non-optimal state ("nightly" being a local notion;).

Sounds like an outright win! If that could be realized, I'd have
less reason to be worried, I guess (I also guess MS couldn't be 
tempted to sponsor a Windows box for Haskell testing/builds?).

> | In other words, someone could go download
> | them, make a "Haskell tools, Spring 2004" CD, and be sure that
> | they actually work together while he/she's trying to learn Haskell.
> Unfortunately I'm unable to do this myself, but the above changes should
> make the task more automatable.

I wasn't suggesting that we sell Haskell tools CDs (though they might
make nice add-ons to Haskell textbooks?). It was just a figure of speech
to express a coherent and stable bundle of core Haskell software, but 
some Haskellers actually start by making a CD snapshot of Hugs/GHC
via a fast connection before digging into their finds at home.

Cheers,
Claus